Saturday, 5 November 2016

Beware the lies of Starmer

Kier Starmer, Labour's Brexit spokesman, has demanded that May push for full membership of the customs union and the single market. It is entirely possible that he does not have a functioning definition of either. He is not stupid but he is lazy. What he is basically demanding is that Britain stays in the EU.

The single market membership option is the EEA. The customs union option is a Turkey style association agreement. To have both is basically full EU membership. In all likelihood he is being disingenuous and is exploiting the stupidity of his fellow MPs.

The customs union basically means the EU still makes our trade deals. No way in hell should we tolerate this. Various remainer commentators remark that Britain probably can't get a raft of trade deals to replace the single market and so we shouldn't leave.

This misses the point. By signing up to the EEA or something like it, we can grandfather the deals we have via the EU but drop some of the aspects we do not want. We would then be free to pursue other avenues. Should we remain in the customs union we do not get our vote back at the top tables. For me, regaining our trade independence is absolutely sine qua non.

Whether or not Britain can achieve a trading bonanza is neither here nor there. The fact is that all modern trade deals have extensive measures for regulatory harmonisation and customs cooperation and that is where we need ultimate power of veto. This is the "taking back control" thing so that we are not adopting laws without proper scrutiny - scrutiny that does not really happen in the European Parliament.

The sophistry of Starmer is extremely devious and cynical and any claims to respect the vote or indeed proclamations about parliamentary scrutiny are wholly disingenuous. If these miscreants had the power they would hand it all to the EU in a heartbeat. The Brexit that Starmer wants is membership of the EU without any of the powers we had as members. That is the worst of all worlds and it is not in the national interest.